The tree house is a childhood staple, and with good reason. Apart from the rousseauan return to nature, there is a kind of unclaimed territory in the shady corner of a backyard—even more so pushing into the forest. Here there is a sense of making, and of self. Nowadays we have the fortune, the technology, and the environmental awareness to bring a bit of this whimsy to life. Dr. Mitchell Joachim and design nonprofit Terreform take advantage of the ancient practice known as “pleaching,” which weaves together the live branches of several trees to create a self-sustaining bio-structure.

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